How I Captured my First Aurora Australis

Your D800 is in the mail

On Sunday 15th of July 2012 I went to a friend’s house to borrow his camera. I had a photo shoot the next day and I had nothing decent to shoot with. My newly ordered Nikon D800 was in the mail… apparently. And I had sold my trusted D3X a few days before. D’oh!

Tonight is the night

I had warned my friend. “Tonight could be a good night for an aurora… are you cool with me picking up the camera this evening ?”. “Sure no problem” he said. After a good chat about the merits of Canon vs Nikon (he is a Canon guy), I say thanks and start to leave. As I step outside I look towards the southern Tasmanian sky and sure enough, the aurora is happening. A greenish glow is dancing gently over the horizon. “Are you sure you don’t want to grab some shots… I don’t mind waiting”. He hesitates a bit, I insist and soon enough we setup tripod and camera on his deck, watching in awe what turns out to be the most active aurora in recent years.

Borealis and australis

An aurora happens when charged particles are carried by solar winds and hit the earth’s atmosphere. The particles transfer their energy to the molecules of oxygen and nitrogen. When these excited molecules return to their stable state they release light (mostly green and red). This is what we see when we see an aurora. When it hits the north pole it is called aurora borealis, when it hits the south pole it is called aurora australis. If the aurora australis is strong, it can be seen not only at the south pole but also at lower latitudes such as Tasmania and New Zealand.

How to photograph an aurora

My friend started shooting and the results on the camera screen were pretty exciting. The camera sensor and a long exposure reveal a lot more light and colour that can be seen by the naked eye. He kindly offered me to shoot a few frames. I decided to go for it with a 30 second exposure at 3200 iso, 16mm rectilinear lens wide open at f2.8. This can be too bright for really active auroras but I wanted to capture as much of the Milky Way as possible. The first shot I took is the one you see below (straight out of the camera). When I checked the image on the camera the green of the aurora looked very bright but I knew it wasn’t completely overexposed. But the upper red glow was recorded very nicely. Some low drifting clouds added a nice movement to the shot.

Post processing in Lightroom

I was very excited by the shot I got but I knew I could improve it in Lightroom (I had shot in raw format as I always do). This is a what I did :

crop and straighten

white balance – In my experience long exposures introduce a yellow tinge to night photographs. I took the white balance from daylight (5500K) to 3750K.

exposure – I reduced the overall exposure by half a stop. I also applied another -1 stop to the green part of the aurora (with the adjustment brush).

contrast – Long exposures at night tend to give flat images. I increased the overall contrast of the image (blacks to 19, contrast to 74, curve to medium contrast). I also pushed the local contrast (clarity to 100). That setting alone revealed the “curtain” of the aurora really well. Finally I increased the contrast further to the top third of the image to darken the sky.

And this is the final result.

And here is another image made from 2 shots stitched together in PTGUI. This one was 20 seconds at 3200 iso.

Awesome shot! And some great tips – I’d love to attempt this err well the northern lights for me as I’m up here in New England – but I’m just barely too far south to really have a chance at it without traveling.

A lot of the tips you mention in this post are great for those interested in simply photographing the night sky let alone this crazy natural phenomenon. I used very similar settings to capture this photograph of two kayaks under the night sky – http://www.phogropathy.com/kayaking-under-the-stars/

I didn’t push the ISO quite as high as you did – only to 1250, but everything else was pretty much dead on to what you used for the aurora.

Anyways, I’m rambling on a bit here, congrats on the first shots – they’re definitely something to be proud of and will always be motivation to go out and shoot again! 🙂

Awesome post and a fellow Hobartian who for some reason I have previously not heard of.

Gary

Beautiful shots and some great advice. The work in lightroom made for dramatic changes.
Just for many reading this, turn around and look north.

Lewis

Some friends and I were flying to NZ that night and the pilot told us the aurora could be seen, unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the plane and the passengers on the right side instantly glued their faces to the windows and left them their for the remainder of the flight : /

Wonderful images and thanks for thr great tips on post production. I was fortunate to see the Northern Lights in Whitehorse, Canada this year and just haven’t been able to tweek the images to my satisfaction. Hoping to return next February for 10 days and looking for some fellow Aurora Hunters to come with me.

Wow, just amazing………….. saw another great shot of this in the NPS magazine just recently!

John Campbell

I took this picture outside of West Yellowstone a few weeks back during a new moon. I was wondering if the green streaks was aurora. I shot it with a Canon 7d mk ii with tokina 11-16 2.8 at 30 sec, 208, iso 2500

Some Older Comments

PaulAugust 16, 2012 08:21 pm

Wow, just amazing.............. saw another great shot of this in the NPS magazine just recently!

Judith ConningJuly 28, 2012 07:21 pm

Wonderful images and thanks for thr great tips on post production. I was fortunate to see the Northern Lights in Whitehorse, Canada this year and just haven't been able to tweek the images to my satisfaction. Hoping to return next February for 10 days and looking for some fellow Aurora Hunters to come with me.

Donna WilsonJuly 27, 2012 06:53 am

Absolutely gorgeous & breathtaking!!!

nimaJuly 27, 2012 06:06 am

perfect job.. you did it

Cam @ Traveling CanucksJuly 27, 2012 01:58 am

Beauty! Thanks for the helpful tips

sreenivasa sudheendraJuly 26, 2012 07:58 pm

Nice shotss

Loic Le GuillyJuly 26, 2012 01:51 pm

Hi everyone

Thanks for the nice comments. The shots were taken from Blackmans Bay, just south of Hobart.

Some friends and I were flying to NZ that night and the pilot told us the aurora could be seen, unfortunately we were on the wrong side of the plane and the passengers on the right side instantly glued their faces to the windows and left them their for the remainder of the flight : /

GaryJuly 26, 2012 09:44 am

Beautiful shots and some great advice. The work in lightroom made for dramatic changes.
Just for many reading this, turn around and look north.

Samuel LeungJuly 26, 2012 09:05 am

Awesome post and a fellow Hobartian who for some reason I have previously not heard of.

JohnJuly 26, 2012 08:18 am

Awesome shot! And some great tips - I'd love to attempt this err well the northern lights for me as I'm up here in New England - but I'm just barely too far south to really have a chance at it without traveling.

A lot of the tips you mention in this post are great for those interested in simply photographing the night sky let alone this crazy natural phenomenon. I used very similar settings to capture this photograph of two kayaks under the night sky - http://www.phogropathy.com/kayaking-under-the-stars/

I didn't push the ISO quite as high as you did - only to 1250, but everything else was pretty much dead on to what you used for the aurora.

Anyways, I'm rambling on a bit here, congrats on the first shots - they're definitely something to be proud of and will always be motivation to go out and shoot again! :)